squirrels or squalling jays appeared to be
abroad to warn game of our approach. Not only a tang, but a thrill,
seemed to come pervasively on the cool air. All the colors of autumn
were at their height, and gorgeous plots of maple thicket and sumac
burned against the brown and green. We slipped along, each of us strung
to be the first to hear or see some living creature of the wild. R.C.,
as might have been expected, halted us with a softly whispered:
"Listen." But neither Copple nor I heard what R.C. heard, and presently
we moved on as before. Presently again R.C. made us pause, with a like
result. Somehow the forest seemed unusually wild. It provoked a
tingling expectation. The pine-covered slope ahead of us, the thicketed
ridge to our left, the dark, widening ravine to our right, all seemed to
harbor listening, watching, soft-footed denizens of the wild. At length
we reached a level bench, beautifully forested, where the ridge ran down
in points to where the junction of several ravines formed the head of
Gentry Canyon.

How stealthily we stole on! Here Copple said was a place for deer to
graze. But the grass plots, golden with sunlight and white with frost
and black-barred by shadows of pines, showed no game.

Copple sat down on a log, and I took a seat beside him to the left. R.C.
stood just to my left. As I laid my rifle over my knees and opened my
lips to whisper I was suddenly struck mute. I saw R.C. stiffen, then
crouch a little. He leaned forward--his eyes had the look of a falcon.
Then I distinctly heard the soft crack of hoofs on stone and breaking of
tiny twigs. Quick as I whirled my head I still caught out of the tail of
my eye the jerk of R.C. as he threw up his rifle. I looked--I strained
my eyes--I flashed them along the rim of the ravine where R.C. had been
gazing. A gray form seemed to move into the field of my vision. That
instant it leaped, and R.C.'s rifle shocked me with its bursting crack.
I seemed stunned, so near was the report. But I saw the gray form pitch
headlong and I heard a solid thump.

"Buck, an' he's your meat!" called Copple, low and sharp. "Look for
another one."

No other deer appeared. R.C. ran toward the spot where the gray form had
plunged in a heap, and Copple and I followed. It was far enough to make
me pant for breath. We found R.C. beside a fine three-point buck that
had been shot square in the back of the head between and below the roots
of its antlers.

"Never knew wh